Cleaning the water cooling parts?

I just got all the parts of my watercooling set up in the mail and soon I won't be a virgin anymore. I read somewhere that I should clean the cpu block and rad before using and leak testing. How should I go about doing this? What’s the ratio of water to vinegar? I assume it’s ok to rinse with tap water and then run the system w/ distilled.

I don't use vinegar at all. I boil reg tap water and rinse all my parts in that. Dry off with a clean lint-free cloth ( a reg white t-shirt will do just fine ) then air dry. One all the parts are clean and dry wrap them up in plastic until you're ready to put it together. A gallon of distilled water costs like $1 or so at any supermarket. Be sure to get a funnel @ any dollar store to help in filling the system.

I recommend good 8 hour soak in white distilled vinegar fo all the copper pieces.
anything delrin or acrylic wash off in distilled and scrub with a new toothbrush that has been cleaned in alcohol. Then rinse off with distilled again.

Radiator MUST be flushed before use. 3 x 6-8 hour vinegar soaks followed by 2-2.5 gallons of distilled flushed through it...(after each soak)

you should be good to go then.

Whats the ratio of the vinegar soak? Or should i dunk the rad in to a bucket with 100% vinegar?

I ran a 50/50 distilled/vinegar mix through my loop and it cleared out all the bits of stuff in the NEW rad. You can probably do either, just rinse well afterwards with distilled.

For new stuff, I don't even use vinegar for the cleanup.
I wash all the bits with piping hot water and dishsoap, as that's the best for cleaning out machine oils and flux residue from manufacturing.
I use the faucet to blast out anything left inside the radiator, by using a bit of tubing shoved up inside the faucet aerator and stuck onto the hose barb (both directions).
If I notice any green or blue bits being washed out of the radiator (or down inside one to the outlets), then I'll use some vinegar with a teaspoon of salt mixed in to pour into the rad to get rid of that. Just an hour's soaking is usually all that's required.

A quick rinse with a bit of distilled water and drying with a towel and it's ready to install.

Vinegar w/salt is best for cleaning tarnished or corroded copper after I've had it a while, or if the block has some tarnish from shipping.
Tarnish (blackening of the copper) doesn't effect performance, just the pretty.

Ya speaking from recent experience.

First rad i installed was a swiftech 220, soaked it in vinegar for 24 hrs then rinsed with water then a quick flush with distilled water.

No bubles or crap or pollutants appeared when loop was filled.


Second rad was a GTX2 and in the interests of time i rinsed it out with water and vinegar a few times, shook it around etc, then filled up loop.

It fizzed up like a ***** because so much crap was left in the rad, so you need more then 1 hr of vinegar soaking. Else you wind up cleaning your loop out bit by bit to remove pollutants.

Its worth giving all your parts a good vinegar soak and rinse.

vinegar is that acetic acid? Is acid bad for water cooling parts?

It's bad to leave it in your water system (thus a good rinse is always recommended), but for a clean-up or soaking overnight it's okay. It's strong enough to react in that time with corrosion and tarnish, but it's weak enough for us to drink it.

For my last loop I soaked the rad overnight in vinegar then rinsed all components w/pressurized tap water as Diggrr suggested. I then semi-assembled an open loop using distilled water and leak tested the block assemblies, radiator, and pump. I used a large covered bowl for a res and placed the intake near the top of the bowl in a relatively calm area. After a few hours I was surprised to find about a half-dozen tiny but visible particles in the bottom of the bowl ...

I use CLR sometimes, makes blocks really shinny. I never ran anything in the loop for my than few minutes.

I think CLR could be bad on rubber and plastic parts like o rings though.

hmm... having an open system for abit seem like a good idea. I probably will do both. I will soak the rad in vinegar for a few hours, flush with tap water, rinse with distilled and then run an open loop to make sure i got everything out. Thanks for everybody input regarding this subject.

I've been watercooling for years and only once have I "cleaned" out the inside of anything. It was a heatercore I soldered on the barb and the only reason I did that was to get rid of the flux from soldering. I've used everything from Delrin parts to old Swiftech aluminum, plain old heatercores to black ice and none have given me problems. The only thing that needs cleaning is the part that contacts a chip imo.

Here's my method

You need:
-Pure white industrial vinegar, no flavoring or any of that stuff
-Dirty Components
-Water (distilled and tap)
-Soap
-Toothbrush

For new components: I rarely clean out anything new unless I think there's some crap still in there. It's like washing a new car in my mind. If I think there is stuff in there, go to the next section.

For dirty stuff:

First, take the thing, be it a rad, res, block, whatever, and put it in a box full of vinegar. Totally 100% submerged. I leave it like that overnight, to loosen everything up so I can clean it much more effectively the next morning. I then dump everything out, rinse the stuff with distilled and see what comes out. For a radiator, I do a repeating vinegar/distilled cycle every hour or so until nothing comes out in the sink (a white sink helps a ton in this stage). For blocks, at this point I use the toothbrush in vinegar to scrub the channels and anything that might not be so nice about the block. After all the cleaning is done I usually do one final soak in the vinegar overnight and one big rinse with distilled water, then it's ready to use.

7

You guys put a lot of time into this the most i did when i got my coolrad was fill it with a mixture of hot tap water and vinegar and shook the ^$^* out of it. lots of green/blue stuff came out. just repeated the process untill the solution that came out was clear.
as for the blocks, an hour was the most soak it needed. a mixture of vinegar, salt and flour and a good solid toothbrush to scrab it all clean.

what i would like to know is how to go about cleaning tubing. I have some clearflex that is stained and id like to use it in a cpu only server loop.

I did the soak with vinegar for 8 hours, rince and repeat deal. It worked out well for me. Make sure you don't soak any rubber though. The biggest notice I got was it cleaned my waterblock up a lot and the first couple soaks the vinegar came out cloudy from the rad.

From my understanding the soaking after the first couple times helps very little with keeping stuff from growing in the loop but does help a bit to keep the tubes from discoloring after a few months.

lolz. it seem everyone have their own way of cleaning new and old w/c components.

As for cleaning tubing, majority, if not everyone say get new tubing. It's not worth the time and tubing is cheap.